The majority [said that] its approach mirrored practices followed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The majority also contended the opposite decision would lessen the public's view of the court.

"Four justices forcing a fellow justice off a pending case will not increase the public's perception that the court is an impartial decision maker," they wrote. "Rather, the specter of four justices preventing another justice from participating will just as likely be seen by the public as a biased act of four justices who view a pending issue differently from the justice whom they disqualified."

The dissenters focused on the particular recusal they thought should have occurred in this case (a case in which 2 trial court defendants appealed separately, and a judge who is now on the Supreme Court had sat on the appeal of the co-defendant). I can't imagine the strife and wrangling that would take place if the judges could change the outcomes in cases by ousting one of their peers. The court already looks way too political. Who thinks they wouldn't use this power in a willfully outcome-oriented way?

Are out standards too high for recusal? Under current standards, Justice Marshall would have to recuse himself in Marburry, since was the Secreatry of State who failed to deliver the commission before Madision took the job.

The Supreme Court of the US or of any state is really just a super-legislature. Anointed citizens whose personal opinions are the final word, with all the legal stuff serving as justifying window dressing.

It's so obvious that the recusal of a judge should be his own decision to make and not be decided by other judges that one can only conclude their power-madness overrides the requirement that a court be disinterested above all.

The article doesn't say, but I assume that, the Defendant lost his criminal trial and asked for a new trial either at the Appeals Court level or the Trial Court, anf lodt there, so he would be appealing in the first case.

In 2008 the Michigan trial lawyers hired an actor to portray then-MSC Chief Justice Clifford Taylor as a doddering old goof who kept nodding off at the bench. The msg was grainy B&W, and slightly out-of-focus so you couldn't tell it wasn't actual court proceeding footage. And it only got worse from there. Taylor lost re-election. I can only imagine what it's gonna be like next year.

I'm thinking we just ought to elect these guys on a partisan basis since that's how they act once on bench anyhow.

As long as things are going to be so unserious and polarized, they could at least make it exciting.

The judge the others want recused picks a gladiator. Then the other judges who want him recused pick a gladiator. The two gladiators fight to the death to determine who wins. Television!

Better yet, they each get to pick a sumo wrestler from their respective pools of protesting supporters. The sumo wrestlers, however, would not fight to the death, just to the end of their sumo match. Humane.

This should not be a close vote. And Althouse is generous in calling the dissent "vigorous." It is strident.

The minority judges really think that they should have a say in everything. They don't. Recusal is the judge's decision, based on their own assessment of whether they can render an independent judgment.

By the dissent's reasoning no judge who participates in a panel decision of a US Circuit Court of Appeals could participate in an en banc decision on the same case. Of course, that is not the rule and to my knowledge has never been. If it isn't the rule in the US Courts of Appeals, it seems like the dissent's due process argument is bogus.

And I thought that Texas politics was wild and crazy. We haven't had judges dukeing it out with each other for a hundred years or more! Of course, Wisconsin Democrats did borrow a page from our Democrats down here when they unceremoniously fled the state during the budget repair bill debate. That's not an Texas thing to either admire or emulate.